Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland talks with his coach Michael Bannon during the Honda Classic pro-am on Wednesday.(Photo: Stuart Franklin, Getty Images)
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — The clubs are fine.
The ball is working.
And in his last competitive round, he beat Tiger Woods.
So, no, Rory McIlroy isn’t worried about his game even if many others are since he switched equipment.
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He has played just three professional rounds in three months — he missed the cut in Abu Dhabi and lost in the first round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship — but is far from wondering what happened to his game that made him the current world No. 1, which he first attained with last year’s win in the Honda Classic at PGA National.
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So much so that he had a hearty laugh when someone asked him at a Tuesday night event that introduced him as a brand ambassador for Bose, an audio equipment company, if he needed time and reps to get used to the “feel” of his new speakers and headphones.
“It comes with the territory,” said McIlroy, who won the second 18-hole match against Woods on Sunday in a friendly match at the Medalist Golf Club at nearby Hobe Sound. “People are just going to write what they write and say what they say. It’s up to me to go out and give an answer on the course.”
Set to defend his Honda title starting Thursday, McIlroy is eager to stop having to defend his switch from Titleist to Nike equipment. Try as he might, he still can’t escape hearing or reading people casting critical bombs his way, including major winners Nick Faldo and Johnny Miller. Last week, during Golf Channel’s State of the Game, Faldo said McIlroy could lose his feel and the switch was dangerous, and Miller called it a gamble.
But McIlroy has been down this condemnation path before. Last year, after winning Honda, he went on a downward spiral — a tie for 40th in the Masters, a missed cut in the U.S. Open, a tie for 60th in the British Open — and was blasted by British tabloids for spending too much time with his girlfriend, tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. His answer? Four wins to end the year, including his tour de force at the PGA Championship for his second major, and money titles on both the PGA and European tours.
McIlroy, who said he’s more used to being criticized because of last year, also knows he’s just two tournaments into his season. That he isn’t the only one who makes equipment changes. And the adjustment period will continue but is far from being dangerous.
“I knew I needed to play well and win tournaments or the criticism would come,” said McIlroy, who has about a 10-minute commute from his new Florida home this week. “I don’t need to read a newspaper to know that.
” … But it’s a good position to be in. If I was lower in the world rankings, no one would really care. But when you’re in my position, people are going to take shots at you. I’d rather be in this position than down in the rankings.”
McIlroy is more concerned about his swing. He said his current swing, when put up against his swing of last year, is like “chalk and cheese.” His swing path is a hair off, leaving him stuck when he brings the club forward, which leads the club pointing to the right at impact. He has worked with swing coach Michael Bannon and thinks his timing and swing are getting in synch.
And McIlroy has talked with Woods about the switch. Woods never made wholesale changes, and in 2000, he gradually started switching to Nike. Woods doesn’t think McIlroy is going to fall to the wayside because of the switch.
“There have been a lot of players who have done wholesale changes with sponsorships. I think Ernie (Els) has played for every company there is out there,” Woods said. “There are a few guys who have done that and they have had a lot of success, and there are a lot of stories where they have not done well and been off the Tour soon.
“The good news is about today’s equipment, we have so many different ways of testing it and tracking it and getting numbers, which back in the days even when I came up and obviously well before then, you didn’t have these numbers in which you can get your launch conditions, your spin rate, basically any kind of data you want, any kind of data you can get.”
Further, when in doubt, McIlroy turns to his father, Gerry, who isn’t worried about his son’s game, nor upset about articles worldwide disparaging his son.
“Oh, no, my dad is fine,” McIlroy said. “He always says three little words to me. You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. He says it all the time.
“That helps.”
